School boards creating problem

Bargaining in bad faith, Opinion, Aug. 16

It is disingenuous for the Catholic school board representatives to claim they are not contributing to the current unrest in education.

They claim to be committed to local negotiations with their employee groups and express a desire to avoid any disruptions to the coming school year. But they neglect to mention that they have advised all school boards to file for conciliation before having met with teachers. This move can be defined as nothing short of provocation. Conciliation is a last resort after an impasse has been reached. Boards and teachers have yet to even meet, so how can talks be at an impasse?

It is clear the interest of school boards is solely in protecting their management rights. They don’t want to scale back a bloated testing bureaucracy that has become big business in school boards.

The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association and the provincial government reached an agreement on a memorandum of understanding to lay the foundation for a productive and smooth local bargaining process. This memorandum is structured to prevent provocation. It is a solution. But school boards are stepping away from this solution to create a problem.